Glass cutting machines wherein sheet glass is divided in correspondence with the required formats, i.e. wherein cut glass sheets are produced, divide glass sheets in accordance with an optimization program considering solely a maximally favorable exploitation of the available glass area. The optimization programs of glass cutting machines do not take into account the fact whether or not the cut sheets to be produced pertain to a specific shipment consisting of several cut glass sheets.
For this reason, the cut glass sheets of glass cutting plants are delivered in a completely disorderly fashion as regards their utilization or their association with a specific order and/or shipment.
The subsequent sorting of the cut glass sheets represents an extraordinarily expensive operation which moreover occupies a large amount of space since several storing areas are required for the cut glass sheets. Since, furthermore, cut glass sheets can also exhibit relatively large formats, it is necessary for their handling to provide either several operators or lifting mechanisms.
DD-Al-267,012 discloses an apparatus for the transferring of cut glass sheets, by means of which cut glass sheets can be tilted about an axis extending in parallel to a rim of the cut glass sheets from a horizontal position into an essentially vertical position.
DE-B-2,539,352 describes an apparatus, by means of which insulating glass panes fed in substantially horizontal alignment while lying on a roller track are swung upwardly by a tilting table into a substantially vertical position. After the upward pivoting, the insulating glass panes in the conventional arrangement rest with the rim which is then located at the bottom on conveyor rolls and are inserted in a compartment of a rack-type cart movable, for selecting the corresponding compartment, perpendicularly to the feeding direction of the pane. The rack-type cart disclosed in DE-B-2,539,352, provided beside the tilting table, has compartments formed by perforated plates wherein the rack-type cart, after insertion of an insulating glass pane in a compartment, is shifted cyclically so that all compartments can be filled in due course of time.
EP-B-48,334 discloses an apparatus for sorting cut glass sheets of a glass cutting plant with a rack-type cart movable on a rail track having several racks and a rack shelf with several compartments. In this arrangement, the provision is made that a righting device is located at the end of a device for cutting glass sheets, this righting device setting the cut glass sheets upright and then delivering the latter via a conveyor in succession into the compartments of the rack-type cart. As soon as a rack-type cart is filled completely in EP-B-48,334, a new rack-type cart is connected to the delivery station at the end of the glass cutting line, and is filled up.
The apparatus known from EP-B-48,334 has the drawback that the rack-type cart must execute a large number of movements in order to fill the individual compartments of the rack shelf.